“Demolition” with Jake Gyllenhaal to launch 40th Toronto film festival

It was announced today that Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts and Chris Cooper, will open the 2015 Toronto worldwide Film Festival with a world premiere on September 10 at Roy Thomson Hall.

With more than a dozen gala openings and a further 30 “special presentations”, a roll call of A-listers will walk the red carpet in September.

Redmayne appears as a transgender pioneer in The Danish Girl, while Moore stars in gay rights drama Freeheld.

Other big Hollywood stars are likewise hoping to shine by disappearing into fascinating characters.

Other films making their world premieres at the festival include Ridley Scott’s “The Martian“, starring Matt Damon, and Stephen Frears’ “The Program“, starring Ben Foster and Dustin Hoffman, which tracks the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong.

Scott’s The Martian – a 20th Century Fox film starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels and Kristen Wiig – will bow in Toronto ahead of its October. 2 U.S. theatrical release. Some of the other notable Canuck features, also announced Tuesday, are Deepa Mehta’s Vancouver gang war drama Beeba Boys, Paul Gross’s Afghanistan War drama Hyena Road and Atom Egoyan’s Holocaust retribution drama Remember.

Tom Hardy splits into two, so to speak, to play both villainous siblings of the notorious Kray Brothers of British crime lore in Brian Helgeland’s Legend.

Oscar-winning actors Eddie Redmayne and Julianne Moore will launch their effort to become double Oscar winners at this year’s Toronto Film Festival.

There’s world premieres for Jay Roach’s Trumbo, which stars Bryan Cranston as the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo; the Maggie Smith-starrer The Lady in the Van, directed by Nicolas Hytner; Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan, a romantic comedy starring Clive Owen, Greta Gerwig and Julianne Moore; Michael Moore’s latest project, Where to Invade Next; and the U.S.-India co-production Parched, by Bollywood writer-director Leena Yadav.

Sicario is one of many Canadian-directed films expected at TIFF.